United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ___________________________ No. 20-3569 ___________________________ United States of America Plaintiff - Appellee v. Paul Petersen Defendant - Appellant ____________ Appeal from United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas - Fayetteville ____________ Submitted: September 24, 2021 Filed: January 10, 2022 ____________ Before KELLY, ERICKSON, and GRASZ, Circuit Judges. ____________ GRASZ, Circuit Judge. Paul Petersen pled guilty to running a criminal enterprise that smuggled pregnant Marshallese women into the United States and profited by putting their infants up for adoption, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(ii) and (v)(I). The district court1 sentenced him to 74 months of imprisonment and fined him $100,000. He appeals both the sentence and the fine. We affirm. I. Background Paul Petersen, a licensed attorney, devised and ran a criminal adoption scheme where he and others working for him profited by paying to induce pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to give up their infants for adoption. He arranged for the women to travel to and within the United States to give birth and then adopt out their infants. He instructed the women to lie about the nature of their travel, causing false statements to be filed in state courts. His scheme involved economic coercion and imposed harsh living conditions on some of the women. Petersen’s scheme violated federal law. Under the Amended Compact of Free Association between the United States and Marshall Islands, Marshallese citizens can generally enter the United States as nonimmigrants without a visa but cannot freely enter the United States for the purpose of placing a child up for adoption. Pub. L. No. 108-188, 117 Stat. 2720, § 141(a), (b) (2003). Petersen thus directed the pregnant Marshallese women to circumvent and violate federal immigration laws by making, or being prepared to make, false statements to immigration authorities regarding the purpose of their travel. The federal government charged Petersen with nineteen counts in a superseding indictment. Petersen pled guilty to the first count of the superseding indictment, charging him with conspiracy to knowingly smuggle aliens into and throughout the United States in violation of law for commercial advantage and private financial gain. See 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(ii), (v)(I). At sentencing, the district court calculated Petersen’s recommended sentencing range under the United States Sentencing Guidelines Manual (“Guidelines”) as 37 to 46 months of imprisonment and a fine 1 The Honorable Timothy L. Brooks, United States District Judge for the Western District of Arkansas. -2- range of $15,000 to $150,000. The district court then varied upward and sentenced Petersen to 74 months of imprisonment. The district court also fined Petersen $100,000. II. Analysis Petersen appeals the substantive reasonableness of his sentence and both the imposition and amount of the fine. We address each in turn. A. Substantive Reasonableness We review the substantive reasonableness of a sentence for abuse of discretion. United States v. Gifford, 991 F.3d 944, 946 (8th Cir. 2021). It is an “unusual case when we reverse a district court[] sentence—whether within, above, …
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals